Basically.
It’s a little more convoluted in that the arbitrator found the insured liable for giving her HPV.
Whether the insurance policy covers the claim is another question.
But the insurance co. has been prevented from running a defence denying liability in the sense of “did the claimant get HPV from the defendant?”
ETA:
Except GEICO didn’t want arbitration.
Well, my take on that is is that they did want it (over being sued) because that’s what they (like all corporations now) put in every contract they make us sign. We give up all legal rights in favour of arbitration in basically every iTunes EULA, insurance document, cell phone plan, etc nowadays. How enforceable it all is, I do not know.
Quite possibly. All I can say is that in this case, GEICO are the party that started court proceedings.
The timeline goes:
The claimant notified GEICO of the claim, GEICO rejected it and started federal court proceedings to try and get a ruling that their policy doesn’t cover this kind of claim.
The claimant and her boyfriend agreed between themselves to arbitrate the claim (without telling GEICO or involving them at all). They had the arbitration, the arbitrator found for the claimant and awarded a figure for damages. All without GEICO being involved or aware of it.
Once the award is made, the claimant notified GEICO of the award and started court proceedings to have the court approve the award so she can enforce.
GEICO found out about the proceedings and applied to intervene.
That’s how we got to these proceedings.
Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification! Not quite the poetic justice I hoped for, but good to know what’s actually happening in this weird case.
It’s definitely weird.
I’m surprised agreeing to arbitration without letting your insurer deal with the arbitration doesn’t immediately void your policy but maybe he was fine to do that because they’d already rejected the claim?
Yah pretty weird, and kinda puts me on GEICO’s side here. Seems like the couple is trying to do an end run and get away with something.
Kevin Underhill of Lowering The Bar suggests, if I’m understanding correctly, that GEICO has NOT been ordered to pay the 5.2M (yet), and will still get an opportunity to claim that the policy doesn’t include this type of injury. GEICO was complaining that they weren’t invited to or informed about the arbitration, but the Missouri court held that they can’t now complain when they initially declined to represent the policy-holder.
That’s what I understood too.
Cory posted this on pluralistic as well:
Thanks for posting that.
The McDonald’s part is spot on, the GEICO not so much.
The real Geico STD story is this: Geico demanded that the case be heard by its arbitrator, who ruled against Geico, because Geico’s insurance terms did cover this event.
That sentence for example is simply wrong in every respect.
GEICO did not demand arbitration. It wasn’t Geico’s arbitrator. The arbitrator did not rule against Geico and the arbitration says nothing about whether Geico’s insurance terms cover the event.
But the general point that every time you read about a silly court judgment, dig deeper definitely holds.
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